Iron Mountain ski jump

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

CHUCK WITTE & THE DAYS OF RAGE

Christ In Winter:
Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

It was one of those nights
I was shuttling back and forth between groups on campus, trying to quell rumors,
head off conflicts. Chuck sometimes shuttled with me, but usually he had to
stay in the student government office, which we used as a command post, in case
something flared up somewhere.

I got back from assuring
the white guys, the ones who might be called “skinheads” today, that the black
students were not intending to try to run a Viet Cong flag up the campus flag
pole, despite what they had heard. That mollified them for the moment.

It was the time of “the
days of rage” on the campus at Illinois State University, and almost every
other campus in the country, following the murders of students at Kent State
University, in the midst of the great divide over American involvement in Viet
Nam.

I was tired. So was Chuck
Witte. We had both been up all night for a long time, trying to keep our campus
safe, he as the student body president, I as a campus minister. Sometimes we
plotted strategy in his apartment on the top floor of one of the dorms, where
his wife, Donna, was the director. Usually we were in the student government
office.

We didn’t know each other
well yet. We had been thrown together by necessity and had been busy ever
since. I told him about the Viet Cong flag rumor.

“I don’t think anyone on
this campus would even know what a Viet Cong flag looks like,” I said.

“I think I would recognize
one,” he said, “but the ones I saw always had blood all over them.”

I’m not sure Chuck was
even old enough to drink legally yet, but he was a Viet Nam vet. He was the
perfect example of an oxymoron, in this case, “Army Intelligence.” He had been
a lieutenant in that service branch. When I asked him what he did, he said, “I
crawled out into the bush and located the Viet Cong and then called down air
strikes on my own map coordinates.”

Chuck was the perfect
student body president for that chaotic time on campus. He was a local boy
whose father was a business man. He himself was a Business major. He was a Viet
Nam vet, an officer. He had an intelligent and beautiful and professional wife.
He was smart and articulate and mature. He had recognized the futility of the
war. No one, of any persuasion about the war, old or young, could dismiss Chuck
Witte.

Chuck was the perfect
student body president complement to university president, Sam Braden. Together
they kept ISU sane and safe, far more than any other state campus in IL, and
most campuses elsewhere, despite fusillades of vitriol and hate from people [i.e,
state legislators] who should have been supporting them instead of defying
them. Chuck was more of a war hero for what he did after he returned from war
than what he did in it.

He went to law school. He
became a father and grandfather. He became a judge in his home town. For 20
years he taught about the criminal justice system to 6th graders in
his court room, a program he initiated that was copied elsewhere. He was active
in his church. He did well in all those roles. Both his daughters have “Dr.” in
front of their name. He died yesterday at the age of 74.

After Chuck graduated and
I had been moved to other ministries by my bishop, we had only one time of
contact, when my daughter, who shares ISU alum status with Chuck, applied to be
the judge’s secretary. “I would love to hire you, just because of who you are,”
he said, “remembering your father, and what we went through together, but I’m
legally and ethically bound to hire the most qualified applicant…”